Martyrdom Is No Hobby

Hobby Lobby Stores have filed
suit challenging the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate requiring it
to provide health insurance to its employees that includes access to the
morning-after pill. [1]
The reason for the challenge is that the mandate requires the “conservative
Christian” family that owns it to violate their religion because the
morning-after pill operates in a manner that makes it an abortifacient. It can
prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in a woman’s womb.

On December 26th Supreme
Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor denied the company’s request for an injunction
that would have allowed it to disregard the HHS mandate during the pendency of
the lawsuit. But that doesn’t mean that Hobby Lobby is going to obey the
mandate. On the contrary, a lawyer for the company has announced that it will
not comply with the regulation notwithstanding the fact that it could face
fines of up to $1.3 million per day for its noncompliance.

Back when Christianity began, the
apostles Peter and John were ordered by the ruling priests to stop speaking and
teaching in the name of Jesus. [2]
The apostles didn’t respond to that order by saying that they would stop if
that was what the law required. They didn’t grudgingly agree while protesting
that the priests were violating their rights. What they said was this: “If it
be just in the sight of God, to hear you rather than God, judge ye. For we
cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.”

Peter and John took the position
that if a human commandment contradicted a commandment of God they were going
to obey God, regardless of the consequences. The family that owns Hobby Lobby
is taking that same position now, and it is precisely the Christian position.

Of course, the HHS mandate also
requires coverage for nonabortifacient birth control, but even that can’t be
complied with by Catholics, and it is important that the situation the Church
is confronted with be completely understood. The issue is not restricted to
Catholic institutions and hospitals. It is not, on the one hand, a violation of
the right of conscience if Catholic institutions are required to pay for
artificial birth control (including abortifacient birth control), yet not, on
the other hand, a violation of that same right if other Catholic employers are
required to do the same. More to the point, if Catholicism prohibits a Catholic
institution to pay for artificial birth control, it also prohibits Catholic
individuals to pay for it or provide it.

The Catholic prohibitions against
abortifacients and artificial birth control apply to individuals as well as
institutions. Thus, a Catholic businessperson may not, consistently with his
religion, pay for artificial birth control; this holds true regardless of
whether the federal government will impose sanctions for the failure to do so.
That means that he cannot simply comply after all political and legal remedies
are exhausted. He must hear God rather than those in political power.

This does not exclude finding
ways to legitimately avoid the imposition of sanctions, provided everything is
done out in the open and according to law. But payment for artificial birth
control is not an option for any Catholic serious about his religion.

In the last analysis the issue is
not ultimately about what politicians should be in power or how the Supreme
Court should rule. It is about how we who are members of a Church that has been
nourished by the blood of martyrs ought to respond to the threat of government
sanctions. If we can be bludgeoned into compliance with the threat of mere monetary
sanctions, the contrast between those martyrs and us will make a ridiculous picture
indeed. The owners of Hobby Lobby are giving us a salutary example of the
courage that is called for in a time like this.